What About the US’s Other 500M GM Shares?

You may be sick to death by now of anything General Motors-related, but of course there’s still more to discuss. Cramer covered those topics during Thursday’s “Stop Trading.”

First, the stock’s price right now. GM priced at $33 a share, opened above $35 and now sits at $34 and change. Why the dip? Cramer blamed it on sellers who got in on the deal, but didn’t get enough stock to warrant holding it. So they flipped it for a quick profit.

But there’s another trend that may counteract that selling, namely the buying over the next few days by institutions. Truth is, Cramer said, that no one—not retail nor institutional investor—got as much GM has they had wanted. That means the institutions, the Fidelitys of the world, that have a stake in owning the stock must up their holdings to the right allocation. This should prop up GM in the very near-term future.

Then there was the issue of the 500 million shares the US government still has to sell. Wouldn’t that depress the stock’s value? Yes, Cramer said, but that might not matter. He thinks GM’s cash flows could prove plentiful enough to warrant a dividend. Maybe with a yield of as much as 3 percent to 4 percent. And if that’s the case, the payout alone would give investors reason to own the stock, regardless of the share price.

In other stock news, Cramer said a recent article by The New York Times’ David Pogue, who is also a CNBC contributor, “slammed” Google TV. Cramer thinks Pogue wields such an influence when it comes to tech gadgets that his piece has made Apple's rival TV product the “de facto holiday gift” this season. Now, this doesn’t mean GOOG should be sold, as it’s online advertising business is hugely successful. But a different take on Google TV from Pogue may have been reason to not buy Apple.

Lastly, Cramer contested a downgrade of Chipotle, saying the analyst in question used too-low earnings estimates for 2011 to value the stock. Hence CMG looking expensive relative to those estimates. But Cramer called this “pure valuation downgrade” wrong because even the analyst’s report found little to nothing wrong with Chipotle. The “Mad Money” host expects higher profits from CMG next year, he said, and therefore the stock is not expensive.

“I don’t’ like to sell on valuation calls when I believe the estimates are too low,” Cramer said. “So I’d be a buyer of Chipotle here.”